IMPERIAL ADVENTURE

By Richard E. Welch Jr.; Richard E. Welch Jr. is the Charles A. Dana Professor of History at Lafayette College. His latest book is ''Response to Imperialism: The United States and the Philippine-American War.''

Published: November 21, 1982

''BENEVOLENT ASSIMILATION'' The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903. By Stuart Creighton Miller. Illustrated. 340 pp. New Haven: Yale University Press. $25.

VIETNAM was not the first time American soldiers fought a guerrilla war in Asia. Following the Spanish-American War of 1898, the Administration of William McKinley determined to force Spain to cede the Philippine Islands, thereby ignoring the existence of a nationalist movement in the islands that had recently proclaimed the independence of the Republic of the Philippines. American troops had no sooner secured the surrender of the Spanish at Manila than they found themselves ringed by a series of trenches occupied by the ragtag but determined Filipino soldiers under Emilio Aguinaldo.

The Filipino leader would most probably have accepted an American protectorate, but President McKinley defined America's duty more rigorously: It required our annexation of the islands so that we might ''educate the Filipinos, and uplift and Christianize them.'' We would pursue a policy of ''benevolent assimilation'' and to do so we would brush aside the foolish claims of a bandit chief to be president of a sovereign nation. On Feb. 4, 1899, shots were exchanged between American and Filipino patrols on the outskirts of Manila and a war of 4l months' duration began. Before it was over 126,500 Americans saw service in the Philippines, and their army suffered battle losses of over 4,200 men killed and over 2,800 wounded. Their enemies suffered battle losses of 16,000-20,000 men killed, while famine and disease accounted for the death of as many as 200,000 Filipino civilians.

Despite the length and cost of this war of imperial conquest, it has received comparatively little attention from American historians. Usually labeled ''the Philippine Insurrection,'' it is characterized in most textbooks as an unfortunate epilogue to the Spanish-American War, a minor incident in America's assumption of world power. The Vietnam tragedy inspired a few studies of the Philippine war, but they were for the most part marred by a determination to read history backward in an unwise effort to find parallels between the foreign policy requirements of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and William McKinley. Stuart Creighton Miller seeks to explain the nature and consequences of the Philippine-American War in the context of its own time, and he succeeds admirably. '' 'Benevolent Assimilation' '' is the most thorough, balanced and well-written study to date of America's imperial adventure in the western Pacific and the most persuasive analysis of the varied reactions of the American people to the military subjugation of the Filipinos.

Mr. Miller offers not only a military history of the war but a social and intellectual history of American response to that war and of the manner in which that response provided a mirror for such characteristics of American society as racism, ethnocentrism, aggressive humanitarianism and a conviction of national virtue that proved invulnerable to proof of national disgrace. In a splendid chapter, ''The Triumph of American Innocence,'' Mr. Miller argues convincingly that a majority of Americans shared the romantic nationalism of such expansionists as Theodore Roosevelt and Sen. Albert Beveridge and participated vicariously in their dreams of martial glory and expanding markets.

MOST Americans refused to acknowledge that the subjugation of the Philippines was comparable to the imperialistic exploits of monarchical European powers. American expansion was different because our cherished political principles were different. American expansion, in the words of a Presbyterian minister, was ''enthusiastic, optimistic and beneficial republicanism.'' If it was imperialism, it was of a special and salutary kind - ''not for domination but for civilization, not for absolutism but for selfgovernment.'' There was much self-deception in this conviction but surprisingly little hypocrisy. The certainty of good intentions enabled many Americans to develop a kind of immunity when reports reached this country of continued Filipino insurgency, mounting casualties and military atrocities committed by American soldiers. Our aims were just; the blame must fall on Filipino ignorance and obduracy. It was with little conscious effort that the more sordid episodes of the war were put out of mind and the ''Insurrection'' itself forgotten, once President Theodore Roosevelt had proclaimed its conclusion on July 4, 1902 and congratulated the American army for fighting a ''humane war'' against ''a treacherous foe.''

Mr. Miller's ability to blend military and social history is matched by his ability to combine narrative and analysis. Vivid descriptions - of the ''water cure'' torture, of Gen. Frederick Funston's capture of Aguinaldo by the use of troops masquerading as Filipinos, and of the American concentration camps established in Batangas Province - are smoothly integrated with analyses of the ineffectiveness of the patrician leaders of the Anti-Imperialist League in the United States, the influence of the experience of Indian warfare on the American high command in Manila and the relationship of insular imperialism in 1898 to the continental expansion of earlier decades. While avoiding the simplistic explanations of the neo-Marxists, Mr. Miller gives proper weight to the economic ambitions of certain expansionists, and his evaluation of the mixed motives of American policy makers is admirably balanced and temperate. There is no attempt to provide exculpation for the suppression of a nationalist revolution and no effort to find an all-encompassing explanation in the sinful operations of monopoly capitalism. Mr. Miller offers instead the best account to date of one of the more significant and revealing errors of American foreign policy.

WHAT is more, he writes well. Taking to heart the frequently ignored warning of the late Samuel Eliot Morison, that ''there is an art of writing history,'' Mr. Miller offers the results of his patient research in a sparkling prose style. Fellow students will profit from the 31 pages of notes at the end of the book and an impressive bibliography of primary and secondary sources, but a majority of his readers will find sufficient satisfaction in the author's ability to tell an important story with clarity, wit and a talent for the apt quotation. In scholarly journals, reviewers will undoubtedly offer the judgment that this brilliant study should be in all academic libraries. One can hope that it will be read and admired by a much larger audience.